The Incident
by hmelton
Summary: [Superman Unbound,Lois & Clark, Ranma, Battlestar Galactica] Rising Sun is using stealth technology to shadow a submarine, so why is she certain someone is watching her?


Superman is a Copyright and trademark of DC Comics, Warner Brothers and its subsidiaries.

Ranma 1/2 is copyright to Rumiko Takahashi, Shogagukan, Kitty, and Viz Video.

no infringement is intended

I also used Arthur Hansens General Tzieun from "China Doll Mecha Machinations!"

C C is welcome

EXCERPT taken from the KYODO NEWS Japan.

"Suspected Chinese nuclear sub enters Japanese waters TOKYO, Nov. 10, Kyodo - (EDS: UPDATING WITH DEFENSE AGENCY INFO, ONO REMARKS)  
An unidentified submarine suspected of being a Chinese nuclear sub entered Japanese waters early Wednesday, Defense Agency sources said."

**THE INCIDENT 2004-11 **

-

The Figure was covered from her neck down in a skin tight inch thick suit that was flat black across a significant part of the the electromagnetic spectrum which included, but wasn't limited to the infrared, visible and ultraviolet portions. 

The suit incorporated the latest RADAR absorbent material know to the United States Air Force and reduce the figure's RADAR cross section to that of a starving gnat for all practical atmospheric frequencies and viewing aspects.

The figures thermal emissions were carefully matched by a passive sensor array to the background for all directions save the top of her helmet, where the bulk of her body heat was being dumped in the form of a infrared laser aimed at deep space.

The Helmet, made of a derivative of the suit material also housed a ten gigahertz RISC array with 8 Terabytes of RAM coupled to a grid of passive ultrahigh density sensor chips that allowed it to collect and store more data across a far wider frequency spectrum than her country men in the two Japanese Destroyers tracking the submarine below.

The entire suit was powered by an array of artificial muscle fibers that converted the figures movement into the energy it needed. It was the first from a production line that would only produce four suits and was the product of a highly classified technology sharing treaty between Japan, the United States and Israel and was designed to make it's wearer literally invisible to the sensors of any observer.

The suited figure was Seventy five kilometers off the southern Japanese coast at an altitude of 102,000 meters traveling away from Japan's coastal waters at roughly 31 knots and currently carefully searching for the person or equipment she was certain had discovered her presence.

Rising Sun frowned as she finally returned her attention to the unknown Soviet design submarine 102,101 meters below, fighting the urge to whisper she spoke clearly saying "Computer full spectrum record." She didn't know who was watching her, but she was certain her feeling weren't wrong and if Ranma and that Greedy panda's training had taught her anything it was to use and trust her feelings.

Her suit's sensor and analysis system weren't flagging anything, but right now she had the same feeling she got when trying to sneak up on Ranma usually just before he looked directly at her and said "Gotcha". Speaking aloud knowing the suit would record her words Rising Sun said "I think someone knows I'm around and are actively looking for me."

Focusing her vision on the Submerged submarine far below she again tried to find a chink in it's hull shielding, but the layer of lead foil or possibly several layers of lead paint prevented her from probing inside. That in of itself wasn't uncommon most warships were being retrofitted with lead shielding and sonic dampeners.

Kasumi was more disturb by the several shielded cargo vessels she had noticed moving in the waters around her home land all were outside Japan's territorial waters and most were headed to or from China and North Korea, mentally she noted the, names, position and course of each, it was something she had seen many times before, but it didn't hurt to notice.

Her government and the US were trying to get a UN treaty ratified preventing non military vessels from shielding with lead, but it was being held up in a subcommittee by Russia, China and several other countries arguing about the exact wording. So far all Japan and the US had been able to do about the distressingly large number of shielded merchant ships was declare them suspected warships, she felt sympathy for her friends in America, their senate was holding up a bill allowing them to turn away any cargo vessel that was shielded and they were fairly busy inspecting the ships when they entered America's territorial waters. Thankfully Japan's politicians had finally put policies in place that allowed the turning away of shielded ships.

The feeling intensified and Kasumi again carefully searched the space around her in an ever expanding sphere, after a moment she spoke saying"Sensor Techs I'm certain they now have lockon, on a count of three I'm going to try and break it. One. Two. Three!" Dropping 5000 meters abruptly Rising Sun sighed as the familiar feeling of being held in cross hairs vanished and said "Sensor Techs they have lost me for the moment see if you can find a difference in the sensor data log."

Hovering directly above the submarine Kasumi checked her oxygen reserve and the status of her rebreather and then frowned at the rate her suit's memory was being filled she had less than two hours of full sensor bandwidth storage left, but she couldn't afford to rely on the suits programming to pick what signals to keep. Settling back into a pattern of watching the submarine, the ocean and the air space above the sub, Rising Sun silently decided to wait ten minutes and if the watcher hadn't found her within that time she was going to drop back to one of the less memory intensive recording modes.

-

General Tzieun stared at the main display and whispered "Gotcha" it had taken billions and their best scientist years of trail and error research to decode and interpret the output from the alien spacecraft's sensor systems, but it had started paying off five years ago, when it had given them proof of overflights by American suborbital stealth spacecraft.

The General's smile turned to a puzzled frown as the system failed to gain target lock, they had perfected the interface for generating a visual display three years ago and it had given them the ability to gain detailed lockons to countless test objects and enemy assets from Japan's Rising Sun to America's stealth craft, but most importantly it gave them a good record of the countless incursions into China's airspace by Superman and Ultrawoman.

Glancing at the other targets in range he noted the Japanese Destroyers and sub chaser aircraft were in full lockon he knew their position to within one meter and could do a scan down to a tenth of a meter. Touching a finger to the symbol representing one of the Japanese planes he watched as a window opened and displayed what the hybrid sensor system had learned about the aircraft. After a few moments study, he dismissed the window and marvelled at what the alien system could tell him about the aircraft, it was soon going to have to turn back it's fuel reserves were low, was just one of the many things made clear.

Touching the fuzzy shape he watched as a window opened to a displayed that only raised questions. According to what the alien sensors were saying the UFO wasn't emitting any heat, didn't reflect radio or light waves and wasn't emitting neutrino's. How or why the system even flagged that something was there, wasn't explained.

Stepping Back Tzieun lip's thinned and he turned to a tech and asked "How much power is being used by the Beta stations?" His frown deepening when the tech pressed a key and window opened displaying the power. It was already at fifty percent, never before had more than half power been required to gain lock on.

The Beta stations were the best copies Russian and Chinese science could, build, purchase or steal of the refrigerator sized sensor pods taken from the alien crash. Each Beta was the size of a frigate and as long as power levels never exceeded 50 percent of what the original alien sensors could draw they appeared to be nearly perfect energy sinks with energy emission that more mundane sensors could barely glimpse. Linking them back to the alien ship's control center via fiber optic cables allowed the control center to track and lockon to any object that was above the horizon.

Tzieun unconsciously assumed parade rest as he thought, he had been sure he would find Rising Sun or possibly one of the American ultramen dogging his countries submarine from near space, but now he wasn't so sure. Rising Sun, Superman or any of America's flying ultramen were easily tracked and classified by the stations, but this was different.

Ignoring the techs that were waiting expectantly General Tzieun stared at the display silently weighing pros and cons increasing the power of the active Beta station wasn't an option. Two large craters now existed where alpha sites had once existed, expensive examples of the foolishness of boosting power, poor copies of alien technology gave new meaning to the term thermal runaway.

Really his only option was to bring another Beta on line, which had problems of it's own, counting the Russian sites they had fifteen Beta stations operational, scattered across both nations, but only a maximum of five could be active at one time a very small pie to divide.

Finally making a decision he said "Maintain power on all active stations and prepare to switch out Russian Beta station..." Glancing at his counter part General Tzieun waited expectantly for several heart beats before General Gorki finally spoke saying "Drop Leningrad station." Continuing General Tzieun said"Bring the nearest above horizon Beta station on line and slowly build power until lockon is achieved."

Tzieun watched, pleased as the fuzzy vague target started to shrink and sharpen up, but after several minutes it become clear an additional station wasn't going to be enough. The gains in detail had quickly slowed as the power reached thirty percent and what the information window displayed still raised more questions than answer.

General Tzieun his frown back in full force, stared at the screen as a vague cross hair pattern slowly faded into view dancing wildly over the fuzzy image, all stations capable of viewing the target were at 50 percent power, this was the best they were going to get. Cursing the New Kryptonians and their continued sharing of technology with their Earthly turn coats, he silently glared at the fuzzy image trying to will more information from the target.

After a moment the General's glare lessened slightly at the thought of his nations own alien informants, at least they were holding nothing back as the ship and it's nonfunctional cybernetic crew slowly yielded a technology that might over match the turn coat Americans and possible even the New kryptonians.

His thoughts drawn partially from the target caused Tzieun's eyes to stray to an armoured panel concealing an array of key switches only a tenth were glowing the green of readiness and he knew even fewer were operational at the Beta stations, but each represented a powerful Laser reversed engineered from an alien cutting tool or one of the problematic magnetic pulse rail guns.

"It's gone!" releasing the keys hanging around his neck Tzieun glanced first at the technician that had yelled and then at the display frowning at a code normally only seen when a target went below the horizon. Tzieun spoke saying "I need information now! Find that UFO!" Turning to one of the techs he ordered "Show me a high resolution replay."

The main display was a hive of activity spurious target symbols appearing and vanishing at random with the remaining destroyers and UFO floating steady in the hash. It had been an anxious twenty minutes of searching before the techs had cut out all computer filtering, after that it hadn't taken long to find and confirm the general location of the UFO.

As the target firmed up and General Tzieun realized it was still hovering over the sub apparently having only dropped a couple of kilometers he forbid a second attempt at lockon, instead ordering two Beta stations to slowly start ramping their power down. It might have been a coincidence, but he knew that mundane sensors did sometimes glimpse what ever energy the Beta stations were using, his personal bet was on some sort of new American stealth probe, probably based on a recent New Kryptonian tech transfer. Looking at the display he thought now that we have you lets see just how far down we can turn the power and keep you.

General Tzieun picked the phone up and paused glancing one more time at the main display after a moment when he heard an answer on the other end he spoke saying only "Don't issue a recall let her do a long patrol." Placing the phone back in it's cradle he turned to watch the UFO as he idly made mental bets about how long it would trail their submarine.

Kasumi sighed and grumbled silently the vague feeling of being watched had returned through it now felt more distant as she hovered over the submarine ordering up her rebreather telltales she sighed it was good for at least another three hours and her suits memory reserves were good for twice as long, since returning to the low bandwidth mode.

Kasumi carefully scanned the area above and below the oceans surface, the submerged vessel had just started a slow climb that would bring it to the surface in about an hour. Jerking slightly and suddenly gaining a hundred meters in altitude when a warning flashed in the corner of her helmet, she mentally reprimanded her own nervousness and then quickly checked her rebreather's status and frowned, why did her it have to pick now to saturate.

Kasumi ignored the slowly increasing frequency of the warning beep as she watched the sub continue it's descent, it had slowed and approached the surface and remained near periscope depth for nearly an hour and then altered course heading for the open ocean.

Finally after an additional fifteen minutes of watching the sub settle into it's cruising speed and depth Kasumi turned for home and quickly dropped back into the atmosphere for a much needed breath of fresh air. Her thoughts turning to an American dish she was planning to cook quickly replacing thoughts of enemy submarines and unseen watchers.

-

howard melton


End file.
